Friday afternoon, our daughter's family from Spokane joined us at White River Campground for the rest of the weekend, adding two adults and two young children to our group of 2-plus-3. (I can recommend double site A3-A4 at White River if you want enough space for two families with a shared cooking area, and a tumbling creek that will lull the A4 tenters to sleep.)
Saturday after breakfast cleanup, we headed up to Sunrise for Day 2 of stroll-before-lunch, this time stopping at the Sunrise Visitor Center to pick up Junior Ranger materials for four of the 5 kids. We headed south to the Emmons Vista, then returned to the Y and took the trail down to Shadow Lake. The weather was perfect: mid-60's and enough breeze to keep flying annoyances to a minimum. The youngest (5 years old) walked the "sag wagon" position with me, and kept me entertained with an unending series of questions (and somewhat questionable "facts" that he knew).
The trail is in good shape, yet my little buddy quickly learned the term "boot-grabber", as he navigated the occasional sequences of roots. At one point as you descend this trail, you come around a short rocky face where the trailbed is mostly stones instead of roots, some of which are a bit pointy. Once I moved him out of the center of the trail, he did just fine. There were enough oncoming hikers that "hiking to the right" was a good idea, anyway.
We paused at one of the larger meadows to stare at a red fox, which appeared to be a juvenile and in some mixed-color state of growth or molt, with greys and blacks dominating his fur. We did check with a Ranger after the hike, and she assured us the red fox was their only fox at this time.
Once we arrived at Shadow Lake, it was snacks time, which was when one of the bright-eyes pointed out the salamanders in the shallows. This started a debate as to whether these were salamanders or axolotyls because of the visible feathered gills. (Again, the Ranger later set them all straight, using a handout sheet to show the four types of salamanders present in the Park.)
On our way back, we stopped at the junction with the Wonderland Trail, so my son-in-law could run the trail down (2200 feet, 2.6 miles) to our campsites, purportedly to get lunch started for us. The rest of us headed for the shady benches near the Visitor Center to have the youngest four fill out their Junior Ranger booklets. We then marched them all into the VC to experience the checking, stamping, pinning and pledge-reciting parts of the Junior Ranger program. Our Ranger was wonderfully helpful, answering all their fox, axolotyl, and other questions as they came up. Appropriately enough, part of the pledge is to "stay curious and ask questions about the outdoors".
Shadow Lake is a great stroll for kids; the round trip was about 2.8 miles, counting the Vista detour, and the total gain is about 200 feet. It IS an upside-down hike, meaning you do most of the uphill work on the way back. But the promise of a Junior Ranger badge and lunch shortly after gave wings to those little feet!
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